Putin’s “Threats” to the Baltics: a Myth to Promote NATO Unity

In his book 2017: War with Russiapublished a few months ago, former deputy commander of NATO Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff predicts that to prevent NATO expansion Russia will annex eastern Ukraine and invade the Baltic state of Latvia in May 2017. Most dismiss the book as sensationalist fantasy, but it draws attention to the fact that NATO is in fact aggressively expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.

Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.

The argument begins with the assertion that Vladimir Putin (conflated with Russia itself, as though he were an absolute leader, a second Stalin) wants to revive the Soviet Union. His occasional comment that the collapse of the USSR was a “catastrophe” is repeatedly cited, totally out of context, as proof of this expansionist impulse. It continues with the observation that there has been tension between Russia and the Baltic states since their independence in 1991. And while Russia has never threatened the Baltic states with invasion or re-incorporation, the fear mongers like to conjure up Sir Richard’s World War III scenario.

So it’s not difficult to understand why NATO, in its largest war games since the end of the Cold War, would choose Poland, which borders both Russia (the Kaliningrad enclave) and Lithuania, as their setting. Dubbed Anaconda-2016, the ten-day exercise involves 31,000 troops from 24 countries including non-NATO members Kosovo, Macedonia and Finland. Germany, whose foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has actually criticized the exercise as “saber-rattling and warmongering,” has sent 400 military engineers but no combat troops.

This follows the June announcement that NATO would deploy four multinational battalions (about 4000 troops) in the Baltic states and Poland to “bolster their defenses against Russia.” The idea is that Russian actions in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014 show that Russia poses a grave threat to European security.

It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s. It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”

But since the Baltics have become the focus of (supposed) NATO-Russian contestation, let’s look at what the problem is all about.

The three states were part of the Russian Empire under the tsars from the 18th century up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. While most of the component parts of that empire soon became Soviet Socialist Republics (such as Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc.), others, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states gained their independence at that time.

But in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there remained large ethnic Russian, and Russian-speaking minorities, as there are today. In 1940 the Soviet army invaded these countries and incorporated them into the USSR. This was part of a strategy to avoid German invasion through the signing of the “Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact” that also meant the temporary division of Poland. (We can criticize this, as I surely do, but that’s the history.) A year later the Nazis invaded the Baltic republics and the Soviet Union as a whole. But the Soviets won the war, and the Baltics remained Soviet up to 1991.

The Baltic states, never truly happy campers in the Soviet Union, initiated the breakup of the country when, from June 1987, protests in Latvia and Estonia led to demands for secession, which the USSR recognized in September 1991. These demands for independence were generally supported by ethnic Russians in the republics. They no doubt expected that they would retain their longstanding linguistic rights.

(This issue of language rights is a huge problem in the former Soviet republics, including especially Ukraine. But it is little understood nor appreciated by U.S.opinion-makers, especially U.S. State Department officials and their media echo chamber.)

Today the Baltic republics have a population of a little over six million, including about one million ethnic Russians. The Russian figure has declined by about one-third since 1991. It is currently lowest in Lithuania (6 to 14%), and 24-30% in the other states.

The restoration of independence produced a wave of nationalist sentiment that included an attack on existing rights of ethnic Russians, distinguished from the others less by looks than by language. As recently as May 2016 a survey co-conducted by the Estonian and Latvian governments found that 89% of ethnic Latvians and 84% of ethnic Estonians are unhappy with this presence and want the Russians to “move back to Russia,” although many are from families who have lived in these countries for centuries.

In Latvia, the State Language Law (passed in 2000) requires that documents to local and national government, and to local and national state public enterprises, be submitted in Latvian only, as the sole national language. (Earlier they could be submitted in Russian, or even English or German.) Aside from being perceived by the minority as an attack on their own culture and identity, this requirement imposes hardships especially for older citizens who have never mastered the “national” language. A similar situation pertains in Estonia. Protests not only by Russia but by other countries have resulted in rulings against Latvia by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Moscow sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians from Ukraine to the Baltics. This should not be so hard to understand. But that does not mean that Moscow—however annoyed it is by NATO expansion to its borders—has plans to invade its neighbors and spark a general conflagration. NATO in 2013 had 3,370,000 service members in 2013, to Russia’s 766,000 troops. NATO expenditures in 2015 were $892 billion on defense in 2015, compared to Russia’s $70 billion.

The idea that Russia poses a threat to any NATO nation is as plausible as the notion that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. Or that Libya’s Gaddafi was preparing a genocidal campaign against his own people. Or that Iran plans to use nukes to wipe Israel off the map. These are all examples of the Big Lie.

Wait, some will ask, what about Georgia? Didn’t Russia invade and divide that country? Yes, it did, in defense of South Ossetia, which had resisted inclusion in the Republic of Georgia formed in 1991, fearing its ultranationalist leadership. South Ossetia, inhabited by an Iranian people, had been included as an autonomous oblast in the Georgian Soviet Republic but as the Soviet Union dissolve sought unity with Russia. So did Abkhazia. These two “breakaway republics” had been involved in a “frozen conflict” with Georgia until real war broke out in August 2008, producing a Russian invasion of Georgia and Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia as independent states.

One can see this as tit-for-tat for the U.S. dismemberment of Serbia in 1999 and subsequent recognition of Kosovo as an independent state in February 2008. This act in plain violation of international law, condemned by U.S. allies such as Greece, Romania and Spain, was explained by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a sui generis case. Well then, that 1999 NATO war on Serbia has led to more sui generis cases, hasn’t it?

And what about Ukraine? The limited moves Russia has taken there have been in direct response of the U.S.-led effort to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, most notably in backing the pro-NATO (and neo-fascist) forces who pulled off the coup of February 22, 2014. Any support Russia has offered to ethnic Russians in the Donbass opposed to the ultranationalist (and dysfunctional) new regime in Kiev hardly constitute an “invasion.”

It’s all about NATO. Unfortunately, the U.S. masses don’t even know what NATO is, or how it’s expanding. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press; its existence is never problematized, or discussed in U.S. political debates (except when Trump says the U.S.’s NATO allies are getting a “free ride”); the fact that its dissolution is not subject to questioning is all very depressing.

But wait, I must correct myself. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, got an op-ed published in the Boston Globe a few days ago, entitled “Is NATO Necessary?” Without calling for its outright abolition, he declares, “We need less NATO, not more.”

But the next day the newspaper website included (as if by way of apology) an op-ed by Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the George W. Bush administration and now professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s entitled, “Why NATO is vital for American interests.”

Burns adduces four reasons for NATO’s continuing necessity.

“The first is Vladimir Putin’s aggression — his division of Georgia and Ukraine, his annexation of Crimea, his threats to the Baltic states, and his military’s harassment of US forces in international airspace and international waters.” (In other words, Russia’s restrained response to NATO’s provocations is reasons for NATO to continue, as a provocateur. And what “threats” of Putin can Burns cite? There have been none.)

“The second challenge is a dramatically weakening and potentially fractured European Union, now exacerbated by the possible departure of the United Kingdom.” (In other words, as the contradictions within European capitalism intensify, the U.S. must keep its camp together as—if nothing else—an anti-Russian alliance. What logic is this, other than fascist logic?)

“The third is the tsunami of violence spreading from the Levant and North Africa into Europe itself.” (In other words, when NATO actions result in so much pain in Libya and Afghanistan, and U.S.-led wars to so much chaos in Iraq and Syria that a million people flood into Europe, destabilizing European unity on the question of migration policy, the U.S. needs to be there somehow using the military alliance to hold it all together.)

“The fourth is uncertain and sometimes seemingly unconfident European and American leadership in the face of these combined challenges.”

(In other words, the U.S. needs to instill confidence by taking such actions as the invasion of Iraq that Burns supported as a State Department official, and the Libya slaughter he supported as a Boston Globe op-ed writer.)

Strength. Power. Confidence.

Burns and Gen. Jim Jones (former National Security Advisor for Pres. Obama) “believe NATO should station military forces “on a permanent basis in Poland, the Baltic states, the Black Sea region, and the Arctic,” and that the “US should extend lethal military assistance to Ukraine so that it can defend itself.” As though it has been attacked.

His final point is “that our most complex challenge may come from within the NATO countries themselves. Our strongest link is that we are all democracies. But, many of us, including the United States, are confronting a wave of isolationist sentiment and ugly extremism in our domestic political debates. NATO will need strong, unflinching American leadership to cope with these challenges.”

This conclusion is of course a reference to Donald Trump and his “extremism” in daring to—-among his many inchoate and clueless pronouncements—opine that the U.S. is protecting Europe for NATO, but spending too much money on it, and Germany should do more for Ukraine. It seems a statement in favor of that Iron Lady Hillary, who was so unflinching in her support of the Iraq War, and the Libya regime change, and who is hot to trot to bomb government buildings in Damascus.

8 Comments

Like the other commenters here, I would fault Leupp for implying that Russia ‘invaded’ Georgia. After the war, even the EU concluded that Georgia had started it by violating the cease-fire with S. Ossetia.

Then there’s this:

This issue of language rights is a huge problem in the former Soviet republics, including especially Ukraine. But it is little understood nor appreciated by U.S.opinion-makers, especially U.S. State Department officials …

In fact, the people in the State Department who actually matter–i.e., the neocons–understand the ethno-linguistic fault lines of Eastern Europe all too well. Most of them are Azhkenazic Jews of E. European origin, and they know very well how to game these ethno-linguistic divisions to the Empire’s advantage.

‘We are all democracies’. Well, that’s an interesting statement and I guess it depends on how you define democracy and whether appallingly useless democracies are better than enlightened ‘dictators’ or not.

Here are a few weaknesses in ‘British democracy’:

MPs elected to Parliament are narrowly elected by a ‘he who gets most votes is elected’ scheme, but representation in the HOC is grossly unrepresentative of overall UK voter sentiment. 80% of UK voters never vote in a meaningful way as 80% of UK seats in Parliament are ‘safe’ or ‘ultra-safe’, one party having a pretty unassailable majority.
The second, revising chamber in the UK ‘Parliament’ is entirely unelected and is increasingly populated by political jobsworths appointed by departing Prime Ministers. It is entirely unrepresentative of the UK Population.
Huge military investment programmes like renewing Trident are ‘debated’ in manners designed solely to ensure rubber-stamping rather than the most vital decision ever taken by a Parliament, namely to invest in nuclear weapons (including the kind, the number, who they are purchased from and how they will be maintained) being subjected to proper, rigorous debate. It is currently being rushed through parliament to take advantage of the internal civil war within the Labour Party and whilst Labour is still filled with Blairite Atlanticists.
Vast swathes of Government influencers (including the ‘national Press’) are for sale to rich lobbyists. Google can buy articles in the Daily Telegraph at will if it wishes to oppose investment in rail or air infrastructure, claiming that driverless cars will solve all 21st century challenges, including travelling at 200mph. Peddlers of civil nuclear power programmes are equally skilled at buying editorials. To say that the UK National Press is now ‘Rentagob’ i.e. Opinions for Sale is an understatement.
The entire Government apparatus is under constant threat from the interests of Mr Rupert Murdoch, who acts as the de facto consigliere for the USA’s interests in subverting any independent decision-making in the UK. Large numbers of UK Ministers house-trained in Mr Murdoch’s wishes are appointed regularly to the UK Cabinet. Unsurprisingly, they pursue policies he wishes them to pursue. This is hardly ‘democracy’.
Yet other UK Politicians have unhealthy links or desires to have financial links to the EU apparatus. The Kinnock Family fortune is mostly linked to enormous EU pensions, which may be somewhat at odds with the fortunes of his former constituents in Islwyn, South Wales. Peter Mandelson has similar links as do several others. To say that they are more interested in pleasing the EU elite than serving UK voters is one of the great reasons to have your blog writings censored by the mainstream UK media, particularly in places like the Guardian.
The BBC, supposedly funded by license payers each paying £150 a year and therefore required by statute to be ‘impartial’, has been flagrantly abusing the terms of its charter in how it reports ‘global warming’ (i.e. it is a fanatical congregationalist rather than an impartial arbiter), how it has reported the EU and more dangerously, how the infiltrated moles of MI6 always ensure that the BBC is beating the drums for war where NATO is concerned. It is coming to something when the death of a BBC journalist might be considered by many to become ‘acceptable collateral damage’, when in my youth journalists were risking their lives to stymie the forces of imperialist aggression. They should be seen until proven otherwise as a substation of MI6, with all the threats to democracy that that implies.
The electronic surveillance society, pushed through under the banner of ‘anti-terrorism’, is in fact global business thieving on an industrial scale with the full support and connivance of the corrupt security services. GSK pilfering the intellectual assets of UK Government funded medical research is one example. ‘Management consultancies’ running employees as ‘remand prisoners’ in their surveillance activities, hacking their telephones, hacking their computers at home and planting bugs in rental accommodation. The mafia is now mainstream, in other words…..
It would appear now that ‘immigration’ is more of a ‘human right’ than ‘controlling immigration’ is. The rights of foreigners trump the rights of your citizens, in the eyes of the politicians. The truth of course is that the politicians do what the money men tell them to do. Which is mostly to allow bankers to avoid tax with impunity whilst controlling the politicians on a tight leash. Hardly the most democratic of scenarios is it? Those who pay tax are subservient to the tax avoiders.
Most importantly, the Chilcot Report documents the weaknesses in UK democracy which allowed the most serious decision any democracy ever takes, namely to go to war and kill innocent people, to be subverted, perverted and manipulated by one man who has been paid £50m in rewards by JP Morgan, other financial services institutions and a variety of foreign dictators for ensuring that such subversions and perversions took place…….

AT the moment, we still have the right in theory (but usually not in practice) to reform these things.

But we really are not a very strong democracy, despite what all the politicians would have you believe.

We are a fairly diluted form of oligarchy to be honest and the old families who traditionally had hereditary peerages would like it to return to that forever.

You might like to do a similar analysis of the USA, as we are all told that the USA is ‘the greatest democracy in the world’. I’ve always believed that if you have to scream that at political rallies ad nauseam, it means that it isn’t true.

But I’d be interested in reading an American putting forward a dispassionate analysis of where the US stands right now…….

Wait, some will ask, what about Georgia? Didn’t Russia invade and divide that country? Yes, it did

No, it didn’t.

Russia sent a miitary force into Georgia to defend the rights of the Ossetians – who had been attacked under cover of night by Georgia’s own neocon neanderthal, “Mikheil” Suck Ass Vili. Sucky began this assault on his own civilian population after they refused cooperation with his American-backed government. Of course, Sucky was armed and financed by Condosleazewhore Rice, who viewed Georgia as little more than a proxy avatar for an American attack on Russia. The whole thing was coordinated Ambassador John The Obese Pig Tefft in Tbilsi. This tub of lard has gone on to become American Ambassador in Moscow this days.

Once Russia had secured the position of the Ossetian civilians and disarmed the Georgian scum who had attacked them, all of the Russian military units went home. No invasion. None.

Yet against the background of this, two ethnically separate regions of what had formerly been USSR Georgia took the opportunity to declare independence. Both regions had suffered prolonged racial assault from the thugs in Tbilisi. Abkhazia, for example, had faced extensive and persistent land grabs from the mkhedroni – bandit vigilante ethnic Georgians from Tbilisi, who were sent on missions to frighten-off landowners and grab the prime seasisde development land plots. They weren’t paid, of course – the ‘horsemen’ (mkhedroni) took a cut on the land they stole.

Both Abkhazia and Ossetia have become independent countries – freed at last from Tbilisi’s gangster racist rule.

Meanwhile Suck Ass – who collects passports the way some people collect stamps – is now a wanted gangster in Georgia. But this does not worry a man whose American passport frees him from responsibilities to the land of his birth, and in any case he is now a Ukrainian city and Governor of Odessa. Apparently he still hopes to obtain Netherlands nationality on the basis of his marriage to his Dutch wife.

Leupp neglected to mention that the Baltics were pure fascists, Jew and Russian killers whose brutality sickened even the Nazis. And that those fascists who fled the Red Army to the West were welcomed with open arms. Here, in Australia, they were called ‘Captive Nations’, with Croatian Ustasham Slovenian and Ukrainian Banderist fascists infesting our suburbs, and they heavily influenced politics particularly in the so-called ‘Liberal Party’. And there was NO ‘invasion’ of Georgia, but simply a thumping military defeat for the fascist psychopath Saakashvilli a US favourite (now Mayor of Odessa in Ukraine??!!)after his treacherous and murderous attack on South Ossetia, now written out of history by the Western MSM vermin.
What is quite plain is that under the US-led Atlanticist hegemony all but vicious psychopaths are driven out of public life in the West and a crazed, hate-filled, aggression, that insanely declares itself ‘Western Moral Values’, rules the world. Unless we find some way to remove this Evil from global dominance, humanity has NO future. None at all.

Western revisionist history has cheerfully rewritten the past of Lithuania, and more particularly Latvia and Estonia, as Hitler’s allies in WW2. By naming the Waffen-SS Divisions in Estonia and Latvia as “the Estonian Legion” and “the Latvian Legion”, right-wing nutters like Norman Stone have attempted to brush the bodies of the victims under the carpet. Their modern-day successors in Latvia and Estonia even proudly upload footage of their Waffen-SS ‘achievements to YouTube.

But as well as the more “triggering” footage of seeing Estonian Nazis goose-stepping in their homo-erotic Nazi regalia. there is the grim detail of the atrocities. The leading role in Holocaust atrocities in Latvia was performed – of course – by local Latvian Nazis, such as the Arajs Kommando:

Latvia remains the only country in Europe to hold an annual Nazi Parade, to commemorate the Latvian Nazis who served in WW2.

The European Union gives this parade their full blessing, and has taken no steps whatsoever to prevent it, or even tone it down. The numbers who attend the parade are actually growing, and not falling – as it attracts more and more of Latvia’s modern-day Nazis.

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